This week, we're taking a look at Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. A game which gained a lot of attention in late 2005. For some, it was the RPG of the year, and for others, it was just a tired walk down memory lane. All the same, it garnered a pretty solid fan base and plenty of rave reviews, and is one of Square Enix's most famous efforts on the PS2 console. So rate away, folks. =p



Anyway the rules for this topic is simple:

1.) Rate the title of the game posted between 1-10 and decimals are allowed. While rating give a sentence or paragraph as to why, posting only a score without backing it up will result to deletion.

2.) Rate only if you have actually played the game.

3.) If you want to request an RPG to be rated, simply post your request during the topic, you dont have to rate to request.

4.) The title to be rated next will be randomly picked by me, but if one or more person requests the same game then that title will be prioritized over the others.

NOTE: I WILL IGNORE LATE REQUESTS MADE ON OLDER TOPICS, IF YOU WANT TO REQUEST A TITLE TO BE RATED THEN REQUEST IN THE LATEST TOPIC PER WEEK.

Previous Results:

Final Fantasy 7 - 7.12 (17 votes)
Breath of Fire 3 - 7.13 (2 votes)
Xenogears - 8.99 (12 votes)
Chrono Cross - 8.76 (14 votes)
Tales of Symphonia - 8.62 (10 votes)
Suikoden 2 - 9.34 (7 votes)
Final Fantasy 8 - 7.69 (16 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 9.31 (7 votes)
Shadow Hearts Covenant - 9.7 (6 votes)
Star Ocean: The Second Story - 9.5 (7 votes)
Legend of Mana - 7.5 (4 votes)
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness 8.6 (6 votes)
Chrono Trigger - 9.14 (7 votes)
Legend of Dragoon - 8.63 (8 votes)
Valkyrie Profile - 7.58 (6 votes)
Kingdom Hearts - 8.14 (8 votes)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - 8.88 (4 votes)
Shining Force II - 9.5 (2 votes)
Suikoden V - 9.2 (4 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 9.65 (2 votes)
Thousand Arms - 7.27 (3 votes)
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete - 8.92 (6 votes)
Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete - 9.6 (4 votes)
Tales of Legendia - 7.82 (5 votes)
Xenosaga Ep. 1: Der Wille zur Macht - 7.45 (11 votes)
Vandal Hearts - 7.8 (3 votes)
Earthbound - 9 (2 votes)
Final Fantasy 6 - 8.87 (7 votes)
Phantasy Star 4 - 9 (1 vote)
Final Fantasy 9 - 7.94 (15 votes)
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time - 7.08 (6 votes)
Tales of Eternia/Destiny 2 - 7 (1 vote)
Xenosaga Ep. 2: Jenseits von Gut and Bose - 6.1 (5 votes)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 - 8.75 (4 votes)
Shadow Hearts - 7.26 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 9.36 (8 votes)

5/10
Epitome of Mediocrity as i call it. [also Draggin'on Quest VIII]

the game brings nothing new to the RPG genre. it's not a bad game, though it's not an exceptional game.
also, add to the fact the story is linear and very predictable, and the characters [especially the hero] are pretty flat and lifeless.

one of the major downsides to this game is- it's too friggin' long!!! a 30 hour game stretched over 60 hours. much fun.

Man, this is ironic. I just finished playing this game on Saturday.

8.0

The game is solid 8 out of 10. Nothing great, but a solid game. It is exactly what you expect from a Dragon Quest game. The hero never talks. The battles are incredibly hard. You have to spend a large amount of time leveling. You never have enough money for equipment. The story is kind of generic.

I thought the voice acting was well done and the British accents were really well done. The game looks beautiful as the art style was very colorful. The different monsters were very unique and each one of them had different strengths and weakness. The story kind of lulls in the middle, but it picks up at the end. Also, there is a ton of replay value with the perfect ending, defeating all monsters and collecting a ton of items.

It doesn't do anything new, but it refines the true formula very well. The epitome of a solid game.

This is not a game I’ve beaten, but I think I’m far enough in it to give an honest review that probably wouldn’t change much even if I had gotten farther in it. I’ve put it down for the moment, but I do plan on picking it back up again.

The story is so-so. It’s really not all that gripping, but for me, personally, it’s good enough that I want to keep going through just to get farther. Battles are really monotonous; partly because I’m more a fan of real time battles instead of turn based now. I don’t mind turn based, and this battle system isn’t too bad, but it just gets so...repetitive. I’d need a lot of patience to level up in this game and to just play it, really. Unfortunately I don’t have that time right now, so I’ve shelved this game for a while longer.

Music is okay as well. I’m a fan of the world map music, but with regular battles...I’m not a fan of it. Though, I do like most of the city/town music. I dunno. The music is alright, though not what I would consider superb. As for the art style/graphics...I loved it. Not too much else to say, I guess.

So, I guess I would give this game a 6/10. I do enjoy playing it, but it’s really not the best out there.


I would like to request Final Fantasy XII be the next game rated.

Its different in that its...a classic kind of story. Which I guess is slightly ironic in its own way. I agree that the story isn't the most gripping. But then again, the Dragon Quest storylines never really have been. They've always been relatively stereotypical, something about a dark lord or a dragon king, except this one's a jester but later on in the story, it ends up being quite similar to those previous storylines anyway.

One thing I like is the game doesn't exactly take itself entirely seriously. A jester got a hold of a cursed staff and turned its retainers into an ugly orc and his daughter into a horse. The voice acting is pretty solid, they maintain the personalities of the characters well. Although I was not so happy that as the story went on, Jessica and Angelo just sort of...stopped talking. It ended up basically being Yangus and King Trode and whatever forgettable NPC you came across in the new town. I think that's a shame since Jessica and Angelo could have been fleshed out a little better.

The gameplay reminded me of playing Dragon Quest on my GBA, which I enjoyed for nostalgia feel. If your not careful, the bosses can give you a whopping, especially since there's no way to save inside a dungeon. So if you lose, you get to start it all over again. An extra bit in the challenge factor but if you had bad luck, then it sucks pretty badly. I thought the graphics were good, in some parts of the game, beautiful in fact. Music was...whatever for me. Really, the only music in a video game that has ever stood out for me is a few Final Fantasy, the Xeno series and one or two tracks from Legend of Dragoon. Most other music in video games I can care less about really.

Overall, the story is indeed so-so and the game can drag on a bit. The characters at least are meant to be funny and not taken entirely seriously. There were a number of times where I actually had a decent laugh with whatever King Trode ends up saying. Sadly this is not Disgaea and I felt there was something extra missing from the story. The characters could have been fleshed out a little better, but the graphics are beautiful and the gameplay hasn't really changed in the series, which adds to a great nostalgia factor that doesn't get old. Dragon Quest fans would really like the game. Being more of a casual fan than anything else, I think its a decent RPG, but long enough with extra things to do to make it worth your while to do.

7.5/10

Finish up the Xenosaga series. I'd like to see Episode III.

A decent game with some flaws.
The story never really gets going and I was hoping for a bit more interaction between the Hero and Jessica.
Dragon Quest is a classical series and so I was hoping for that classical spark, but it never really happened, untill right at the end.
The gameplay is very plain, maybe even dull. I know several games that use the same system, but have little twists or extras that makes it unique. Dragon Quest VIII's system comes straight out 1988.

However, good characters, good music and lots of cheesy jokes makes this game quite enjoyable.
Dalmangus is an odd villain and I never really got into him. Him being Jesus is cute, but that doesn't really give him the awesome villain legacy other villains do have.
Yangus is my favourite, for using the old worker class accent used in old England. You can never hear cor blimey enough.

So, all in all, this game is a decent game, maybe it could've polished the battle system a bit, or the story, especially with Jessica and the Hero, considering the true ending and such.
But, apart from that, the game is a nice game.

Score 7/10

Do I get to LOL because most people complain about the direction a lot of RPG's are taking, but when a traditional to a T RPG comes along people bitch?

Wheeeeehaw.

Dragon Quest 8 is the first and only Dragon Quest game to appear on the PS2, and it garnered very controversial ratings from old-school and new-school gamers alike. As a result, it is a good game, but might not prove to be a lasting experience for those wanting a more refined RPG to play.

Dragon Quest 8's story starts off in the Castle of Trodain, where an evil sorcerer known as Dhoulmagus broke into the castle vault and stole a mysterious scepter, unleashing a terrible curse upon the entire castle. As a result, the castle and it's inhabitants were completely covered in thorns, the king became a goblin, and the princess was turned into a horse. The only person unaffected by the curse, was you, the hero. You, the King, and the Princess decide to embark on a journey to track down Dhoulmagus in hopes of returning the kingdom to its former glory. During the journey, you bear witness to more of Dhoulmagus's terrible acts on the innocents of the world and befriend those who have also become victim to him. Dhoulmagus's motives become clearer as the journey wages on, and the awakening of a potentially greater threat to the world becomes imminent. It is up to you to defeat this evil and bring peace to the world.

The story objective is fine, but this really is all there is to the story, unfortunately. You go around the world seeing Dhoulmagus doing bad things left and right, and killing certain individuals for reasons that only become apparent later in the game. Unfortunately, stopping Dhoulmagus is really the only thing you do during the game, and unfortunately it doesnt carry the story very well. The problem is that the overall story is too simple and not very interesting. There's just not enough to the events of the story to drive gamers forward to see the game through to the end. The characters in this game are too few and get too little development aside from their initial introductions. Even the hero only gets his actual development in a side quest during the post-game. The king and princess are decent support characters, but tend to come off as more annoying than anything else, most of the time. In the end, I cared more about the various locations I visited and the expansiveness of the quest itself than the actual story.

The graphics are amazing in this game. This is one of the most well-realized worlds you will probably ever see in an RPG. The world map is huge and detailed, and everything is drawn perfectly to scale. The game is simply amazing to look at. The only small issue I have with the game, graphics-wise, is that the world itself is very plain and ordinary. There's nothing about the contents of the game's world that makes it stand out at all. In the end, it's the design of the graphics that'll blow you away moreso than the actual world itself. The music in the game is very well composed, but only a couple of tracks actually stand out at all. The world map theme is very good, but the battle theme gets annoying very fast. The voice-acting is a very interesting effort, in that the characters all have British accents. This actually makes sense, because the game takes place in a Euro-midieval themed world. Sound-wise, it's good, but the music could probably be a little better.

The gameplay is probably Dragon Quest 8's strongest point. The world map is huge and is a blast to explore in this game. You can fight random battles against enemies, or you can find on-screen enemies on the world map, which are much tougher than regular foes. Later in the game, you can recruit thoe monsters for yourself, then send them into battle in place of your party. As you level up, you gain skill points that can be allocated to a certain type of statistic or weapon for your characters, which open up skills for that weapon/ability. Early in the game, you can gain access to a Warp spell which makes backtracking to towns much easier. Leveling up and upkeeping your characters' equipment can be tedious, but the battles themselves are fun, and quite challenging. You can also fuse items together into stronger weapons and accessories. Blueprints for fusions are found all over the game's world, or you can just use GameFAQs to find out what's best to make. This is key to making your characters strong enough to get through the game. All in all, the gameplay is what made the game worth the playthrough above all else.

The extras are very diverse. Besides hidden item fusions, there's a casino you can access in various towns to get hidden items you cant get anywhere else. There's also a Monster Arena you can compete in to send your monster team to battle against other characters' monster teams. There's also the Hero's post-game quest where you can learn about his past and fight a hidden boss to get a special set of equipment. However you can only get one piece of equipment per fight, which makes the process a bit annoying. The extras are few in this game, but they're still fun.

Dragon Quest 8 was an unusual experience for me. While I did enjoy it the first time I played it, the end result was that it wasn't quite as satisfying as many of the RPGs I played at the time, despite it's considerable length, expansive quest, and exhilarating gameplay. The story and characters were extremely bland and werent interesting enough to sustain the length of the game. As a result the game tended to drag much of the time. It's a great game for those who want a more purely old-school experience, but those looking for more substance, story-wise, might be better off looking elsewhere.

Story - 4/10
Characters - 3/10
Graphics - 9/10
Music - 6/10
Gameplay - 9/10
Extras - 7/10

Overall - 6/10

I absolutely loved Dragon Quest VIII as traditional and old school as it comes. The graphics were some of the best I've seen on a PS2 the cell shading was perfect and the world map hasn't been bettered in my opinion. I thought the music was fantastic, orchestral and epic (I don't know how anyone can say it's OS was just average). The story was nothing to write home about but I loved the light hearted feel this game possessed never really taking itself too seriously. The downside was the game was maybe a little too long. A lot of people have complained about the difficulty but I thought the challenge was just right and I never really had to level grind too much but then again I was obsessed with killing the metal slimes so that racked me up a few levels - that's probably why I never noticed. Oh and I loved the battle system.

Not one of my top ten favourites but definitely a top twenty and a fun, adventurous and above all else a traditional RPG(which I love) 8.9/10

^ This.
Lock this thread up. It has a winner.

And who is the pisspot mod that deleted the first post I made declarig this victory? Stop being such a pisspot and lighten up, dude.

I enjoyed the game. It wasn't flawless by any means (a couple of dungeons were a tad tedious), but I loved how it felt like you were adventuring in the overworld. I liked the fact that there were some challenging battles in the game and that you couldn't just plow through it. The characters were a tad cliched, yet the light-hearted feel worked well with the game. The symophonic music also fit perfectly.

7.7

Loved the graphics and the Akira's touch. The characters were nicely done and the world was really opened for exploration. The battle system was a bit tough in the beginning, but once I got the hang of it, it was really fun. Bad parts goes to lack of story explanation, small cast of main characters and NPCs and the overall lame story with no real twists and turns. Some quest were really stupid that would find any kind of excuse for you to go dungeon crawling. It was a fun game in general.

I give this game a solid 7.6/10